Google, Apple, Microsoft Sued Over File Preview

ClaraBow writes with this excerpt from MacWorld: "A small Indiana company has sued tech heavyweights Microsoft, Apple, and Google, claiming that it holds the patent on a common file preview feature used by browsers and operating systems to show users small snapshots of the files before they are opened. ... Cygnus's owner and president Gregory Swartz developed the technology laid out in the patent while working on IT consulting projects, McAndrews said. The company is looking for 'a reasonable royalty' as well as a court injunction preventing further infringement, he said. ... Cygnus applied for its patent (#7346850) in 2001. It covers a 'System and method for iconic software environment management' and was granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office in March of this year."

Comments

Two words:

[GrahamCox]

Two words: prior art.

And plenty of it. We had live preview icons in an app in 1989.

Re:Two words:

[Anonymous Coward]

What you dismiss so glibly in two words is actually hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars worth of highly technical legal arguments.

Re:Two words:

[ralphdaugherty]

It's going to be expensive to fight these patents one by one that were rubberstamped for years. We need to throw out all software patents and return to copyright protection like we had.

  rd

Re:Two words:

[Anonymous Coward]

Two good things that would prevent cases like this from wasting people's time:

1. Patent reform.
2. Loser pays.

Patent reform only works if unfair cases are being brought to court, argued, and won in a way that is contrary to the intent of the system. It is premature to say that this suit is anything more than a paper tiger. Bring up the patent on the Patent Application Information Retrieval system. Look at the rejections, amendments, and arguments. Significant changes were made to the patent claims, gutting much of their scope. The company bringing these suits is delusional if they think they have a case that can settle for anything more than nuisance tribute, especially from such high profile veterans of more balanced legal battles. What kind of patent reform would keep someone from trying to enforce a weak and narrow patent? Would they be less likely to try to enforce it if it was even weaker and narrower? Should we only allow patents that are strong and broad? Should it matter that many patent applicants only want very narrow patents, and many dont' really care if they would have much valuable in litigation?

As for loser pays...what makes you think that is such a good idea? Record companies use the threat of attorney fees to press defendants into early settlements. Would it be alright for Google or Microsoft to sue smaller companies, or individuals, based on flimsy patent claims, but win because their potential attorneys fees could be astronomical...perhaps significantly more than any reasonable royalty for the patent? How about if they faced smaller companies with strong patents and potentially good cases, but those smaller companies decided not to try to enforce their rights because of the possibility of being bankrupted if the suits failed?

There are advocates of loser-pay, but loser-pay skeptics seem to be well-versed in the pros and cons of loser-pay systems. While loser-pay could have a positive effect on the American legal system, it is by no means a common-sense no-brainer.

Re:Two words:

[Schemat1c]

Weight of money does not necessarily add credance to a particular viewpoint.

You're from Earth right?

Economy is in deep shit, this is a symptom

[roman_mir]

Economy (not just US economy, but especially US) is in deep f.cking shit. This is a symptom. You see, very little is actually produced in the US at this point, but more regulations, lawsuits, patents, various copyrighted materials like movies/music are still made there (I live in Canada, we are not far away from this problem here also, except that our movies/music sucks even more.)

When there is nothing to produce except for more laws/regulations, meaningless, useless, obvious patents and lawsuits, and also the greenback, at this point you have to ask yourself a question: how is this economy, that borrows so much from the rest of the world and then buys the products from the rest of the world going to pay the freaking debt? What is it, 10 trillion in debt at least?

Anyway, I read TFPatent and thought to myself: holy shit. In 1998 I worked on a system for a purchase basket for a promotions company and I had to display thumbnails on the HTML page too.

In fact various stores and also porn sites would be great at showing prior art to this BS patent.

Re:Wait a minute...

[MrZaius]

Quite - Of all the news sites not to make the distinction....

Re:So once the big guys are down...

[JohnBailey]

And then immediately lawsuits are pressed against Canonical, Debian, Novell, and anyone else who allows patented material to be added to their distributions.

Which would be immediately laughed out of court. They would only have a case if the distro was offering the software themselves. Anybody can set up a repository anywhere in the world. Just like anybody can offer a Windows based DVD ripper. So why have the MPAA not sued Microsoft? The same reason. They can only control what they offer themselves. If Microsoft included a DVD ripper in Windows 7, then the MPAA might have a case.

Free software still has to follow the law.

Absolutely... So what law are they breaking?

Re:So once the big guys are down...

[Sebastian Reichelt]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but actually, if they are successful, it works more like this:

1. Idiot sues Apple
2. Apple pays money

1. Idiot sues MS
2. MS pays money

1. Idiot sues Gnome Foundation etc.
2. Gnome, KDE etc. must remove the previews
3. One day later an unofficial patch pops up somewhere
4. One month later it becomes apparent that nobody except a few techies uses that patch, and people start to blame "Linux" for lacking an essential feature